Speakers

Carolina Kwok is a Program Officer with Grand Challenges Canada’s Global Health Innovation team, in which capacity she sources and supports innovations as they Transition to Scale. Carolina has over 10 years of experience in implementing and managing global health programs in Africa and Asia. Prior to joining GCC, Carolina worked Clinton Health Access Initiative as a program manager, overseeing market access projects to ensure sustainable and equitable access to the optimal tuberculosis treatment. She has also worked in scaling up HIV counseling and testing, and family planning services, and conducted research in the areas of HIV, MNCH, tobacco policies and multi-drug resistant tuberculosis. Carolina completed her physiotherapy training at McGill University and worked in the areas of neurological rehabilitation in Toronto and Vancouver prior to attaining her MPH from Simon Fraser University.

Hortance Manjo is a project management specialist with over a decade experience is managing projects and leading teams. Hortance is the Country Program Director of the Cameroon Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC) Development Impact Bond (DIB) project. She provides in-country leadership for the rollout of KMC for Low birth weight and pre term babies across Cameroon. This DIB is funding a health practice that will save and improve hundreds of newborn lives in Cameroon. Hortance plays a key role of facilitating the Foundation’s partnerships with the outcome donors, investor, service providers, local and international partners involved in the project.

Hortance worked for several years at Orbis International as the Cameroon Country representative for over five years and led the full range of ORBIS programmes in Cameroon and managed the organisation’s relationship with the Government of Cameroon and partners. In her previous role as Country representative, Hortance was part of national advocacy initiatives that facilitated linkages and networks to support avoidable blindness prevention programmes.

Louise Savell is Co-founder and Director of Social Finance and jointly leads their international development team where she advises governments, philanthropies and service providers on the design and delivery of social development programmes. She was a 2020 Blavatnik School of Government Visiting Fellow of Practice. She is passionate about driving social impact through rigorous analysis, efficient structures and effective cross-sector partnerships. She has particular expertise in outcomes-based approaches and social investment structures. She co-developed the Impact Bond approach in 2008.

Louise specialises in the development and delivery of new initiatives and has led work in health, education, nutrition, homelessness, financial inclusion and infrastructure in the UK and internationally. Before starting Social Finance, she led the Eastern European programmes of the UK-based philanthropic foundation, Ark, where she worked with government and service providers to accelerate the reform of child welfare systems towards family-based care in Bulgaria and Romania.

Mara is an Economist and Decision Analyst and holds degrees from Bocconi University in Milan and the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research is motivated by a desire to improve decision making in government, with a special interest and extensive expertise in the field of healthcare. Mara is one of the lead developers of the STAR toolkit, a socio-technical approach sponsored by the Health Foundation to improve resource allocation in healthcare organisations.

Mara has worked extensively with managers of the English and the Italian National Health Systems. She has also consulted for the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care in Ontario (Canada), the Home Office, the Ministry of Defence and the (then) Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in England, NATO and the Global Fund to fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

Dr. Martina Lukong Baye (MD, MPH) is a physician specialized in Public Health and is greatly interested and involved in the promotion of maternal and child health in her country, Cameroon, and beyond. In line with this, during her term on the Executive Board of the World Health Organization (WHO) as representative of Cameroon (2011 -2014), she strongly advocated for the adoption of the Every Newborn Action Plan.

She is currently the national coordinator of the multisector program to combat maternal, newborn and child mortality in Cameroon. In this capacity, she piloted the development of the RMNCAH investment case within the Global Financing Facility for Every Woman Every Child Initiative and is following up its implementation.

Thomas is a senior economist in the operations policy unit of the World Bank, where he works on evaluating and advising on the design of results-based financing operations worldwide. Before joining this unit, Thomas spent six years preparing and supervising similar operations with sub-national governments in Brazil. He has a PhD in political science from Columbia University and has held research fellowships at Princeton University and the University of Cape Town.